Intro: Matthew 25:34-40
Being sick is one set of circumstances every one of us can relate to. I don’t care who you are, you’ve been sick, or are sick, or are about to be sick. It’s just a fact of life.
One of the first questions we start asking when someone gets sick is: Where did it come from?
Food poisoning – where did you eat?
Flu – who were you around?
Heart attack or cancer – do you have a history of this in your family?
Sniffles – do you have allergies? What are you allergic to?
We want to understand where it comes from so that we can avoid it. So, this morning, as we talk about caring for “the least of these,” and specifically about those who are sick (or feeble), let’s begin by considering why they’re sick and how that fits into our whole view of people who are sick.
I. Where it all begins
Joke - Man walks into the doctor, not feeling good. He has a stalk of celery in one ear, a banana in his other ear, and a carrot up his right nostril. He tells the doctor he’s just not feeling good at all. The doctor looks at him and says, “Well, I know what’s wrong with you. You’re just not eating right!”
The doctor’s first concern is diagnosis, isn’t it? If he can figure out what’s wrong, from there he or she can help determine a course of treatment. But, to know how to deal with sickness, they have to first understand what’s causing it. Let me tell you what’s making people sick today: Adam and Eve.
To really understand sickness, we need to go back to Genesis 3. It was there, in the moment of selfish pursuit that our first parents chose not to listen to God. They disobeyed, and as a result the perfect creation was changed. When they chose to act in opposition to God, they not only betrayed their relationship with Him, they also betrayed their responsibility as the stewards and caretakers of creation. So, man’s relationship with God was changed, and man’s relationship to creation changed - the earth was changed.
Genesis 3:16-19
To the woman [God] said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."
So, here was a world without sickness or death or growing old and feeble. Then, Adam and Eve fall, and it all changes. So let’s begin there: all sickness starts as a result of that Fall. Before that time, things like death, cancer, strokes, thorns, chigger bites, and beets, didn’t exist. So, people who are feeble, sick, or somehow physically compromised, are victims of the Fall, just like everyone who dies – which is all of us. These are alien presences in God’s creation. So, in a way, sickness can be compared to poverty, hunger, oppression, and other things that cause people to be needy.
II. Where it takes us
John 9. The disciples look at a man born blind. He’s an adult. His whole life, he hasn’t been able to work a trade, to be physically strong. He sits there, pathetic. So, the disciples are faced with a dilemma. After all, everyone knows that things like blindness are a result of some sin. But here’s a guy who was born this way. So they ask the obvious question: “Whose fault is it that he was born blind – him or his parents?”
Really, guys? Why aren’t you asking something like, “Is there anything we can do for this man?”
John 9:1-5
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
Jesus takes the wrong preoccupation of the disciples and directs their attention to the bigger issue at hand. The cause of this man’s blindness isn’t near as important as what’s going to happen because of his blindness. This happened to him not because he sinned, but so that the work of God can be displayed in his life.
When we see someone who’s sick, it’s not really useful to expend much energy determining how they got that way. Maybe what we ought to be doing is seeing how the work of God can be displayed in their situation.
So, here’s a sick person. Let’s make it a little more real. Let’s say it’s a man with AIDS. Is this person physically compromised because of his own doing? Who cares?!
Ill - In OH, I was asked to come talk to a man who had requested a preacher. His name was Bill, and he was lying in a hospital bed, dying from lung cancer, caused by smoking. The man I met in the hospital that day was emaciated and pathetic from years of abusing his body. He had been a heavy smoker, and he was an alcoholic. He had mistreated everyone important in his life. As a result, not only was his physical body a wreck, but everyone who should have been close to him hated him and wanted nothing to do with him now. Does God care for a man like that? I looked at Bill and learned about his life. So, I told him “Hey, you pretty much got yourself into this mess. All I can say is you’re getting what you deserve!” No. That’s not the time. He already knew what got him there. It was staring him right in the eyes. He didn’t need me to tell him what was obvious. This man had asked for help. He needed a word of hope, even for someone who lay dying in a hospital bed. So, we talked, and I shared with him about a savior named Jesus Who all along wanted Bill to know Him and be forgiven through Him. That’s what Bill wanted, so with the hospital’s help, Bill was baptized into Christ, and 3 days later, Bill met Jesus face-to-face.
Take just a moment, and consider the heart of Jesus as He looked on the masses of people, faced with sickness and ultimately death – little children faced with wasting diseases and defects; grown men, reduced to being carried to the temple gate to sit and beg; others who have grown weak and helpless due to old age. What was it like for the Creator to look upon these people? Jesus looked at these people, afflicted with disease and feebleness, and had compassion for them. And He told us that when we look after them, we’re doing that for Him.
Healing was a part of the ministry of Jesus. It showed His love and compassion. It affirmed His claim to be God in the flesh. It was also a part of the messianic ministry.
Now, let’s take a quick look at Isaiah 53, where the whole chapter is about the Messiah, and His suffering – about Jesus, and it was written some 700 years before He was even born!
Isaiah 53:4
Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.
In context, this whole chapter is about the ministry of Jesus as our Savior. He is the one Who takes the blow for us, the One Who suffers so that we can go free. It’s about our sins, our transgressions, our iniquities, our guilt, and Jesus being crucified for them. Just read that chapter again. It’s so obvious that’s what it’s about, so we know v4 is about our spiritual sickness when it says He took up our diseases and carried our sorrows, right?
Well, yes, until Matthew takes it and tells us it means more. The scene is in Capernaum.
Matthew 8:14-17
When Jesus came into Peter's home, He saw his mother-in-law lying sick in bed with a fever. He touched her hand, and the fever left her; and she got up and waited on Him. When evening came, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed; and He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were ill. This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: "HE HIMSELF TOOK OUR INFIRMITIES AND CARRIED AWAY OUR DISEASES."
With that comment, the HS, through Matthew, helps us realize that the healing of Jesus is holistic
– it points to our healing spiritually, but that crosses over into our physical well-being.
We tend to compartmentalize our understanding of being healed, and our prayers reflect it: “Dear Lord, please fix all these ailing body parts.” That’s one list. Then there’s another list of people whose souls are lost. We tend to think of them separately. Our attitudes reflect it too. And when we manage to care about someone’s soul and not think about what they’re going through physically, we’re missing an important focus of why Jesus came.
I find it interesting that the same word in the NT translated “saved” frequently means “healed”
Think about it – they’re both about delivering us from the results of sin. So, when Matthew tells us about the ministry of Jesus, he talks about it in that sense. People who are freed from demon possession are right alongside people who are freed from fevers and blindness and leprosy.
Isn’t the ministry of the Church more like that of Jesus when it concerns itself not only with the spiritual health of people, but also with their total wellbeing? Wouldn’t we be in line with Scripture if we prayed for the spirit, soul, and body of people? Well, yes, we would!
1 Thessalonians 5:23 (NIV)
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
OK, that’s where the whole subject of illness and feebleness takes us. Now, let’s figure out how to help anyone who is faced with it to have…
III. A good outcome
It’s true that God sometimes uses sickness to punish people. More than one person was struck with leprosy as a punishment for something they had done. And God gave the Israelites an interesting promise in…
Deuteronomy 7:15
The LORD will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you.
But sickness is also something that happens to people sometimes just because we live in a fallen world. It’s not necessarily related to whether or not they’ve sinned. It may even be just the opposite. Our son Andy went on a short-term mission trip to Jamaica, where their team visited an orphanage, and where half the team picked up hand, foot, and mouth disease. It wasn’t because they were doing something bad. It was because they were ministering to kids in need.
Understanding sickness better should make us a better help to people who are facing it.
There’s a good study of this in the book of Job.
The book starts out with us meeting Job. He’s a good man. God even points him out as a good man, and He gives Satan permission to strike all that he has, including his health. His children are killed, his wealth is all lost, and then he is covered from head to toe with painful boils. Job’s 3 friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar all come to visit and comfort him. That’s the right thing to do – the very thing we’re talking about today. They showed up, and Job was so miserable that they just sat there silent for 7 days. That’s the best thing they did! Then, it went downhill from there! They spent their energy trying to explain that if Job would just straighten up his life, if he would just come clean on his secret sin, his sickness and misfortune would go away. That’s what not to do when someone is sick or feeble.
Sick people don’t need an argument to explain their sickness. In fact, they may need us to point them to the story of Job all over again, and to say to them, “There really may be no good reason I can point to right now that you’re going through this, but I know that God is here with you and somehow He can use it for good.”
The outcome of looking at all this should be that we would have such hearts that we would care for those who are sick or feeble – that we’d somehow “visit” them – check up on them.
I was sick, and you came to me.
Conclusion:
Today’s “project” is a little harder to pile on the stage here, because it involves the need for us to check up on people. I want to suggest a few things that can be done, and maybe there are one or two of them that you can be a part of as we minister to “The Least of These.”
1. There are places in town that are full of sick and feeble people – hospitals, care centers, rehab places, assisted living, and homes where people are under hospice care. I counted at least 15 nursing homes in Rockford. In many of these places, it would be as easy as calling them up and saying, “I’d like to offer an hour or 2 to help someone who needs help there. What may I do to help?”
Paul Fricke, one of our own number, has grown sick and feeble. He’s in Maryland, so going to visit him isn’t as easy as it once was. Paul has serious cancer right now. In fact, hospice care has been assigned to him. One of the things I appreciate about Paul is that he has been a hospice volunteer. That means, he put himself right into situations where there were people in their last days on earth, and he was there to check up on them. Now, he’s the person on the receiving end of that care. It’s something he was able to do, and something he felt called to do. Maybe that’s you.
2. This morning, in your bulletin, there are some inserts about an opportunity to send simple gifts of encouragement to a particular group of people who need some encouragement through their illness – children who have had heart surgery due to congenital heart defects. It just so happens that 2 of our own young people at CCC have been through this. There’s a list there of things that you can bring next Sunday, and we’ll pile them here on the stage as you come in, and then we’ll see that those get to the group of hospitals that specialize in this. They’ll be gathered together and put into “Bravery Bags” for these kids, and some of you will be able to visit them with that special gift that helps them face the challenges of heart surgery at a time in life that’s supposed to be a lot more carefree.
3. Third, many of you are aware that in June the LaMeres are planning to make a return trip to conduct medical clinics in the Dominican Republic. The group they go with is there to visit the sick, the least of these in a poor country, to help them with medical assistance that they otherwise just wouldn’t receive. They also use the opportunity to minister to their spiritual needs – to help introduce people to Jesus. If you’d like to help send the LaMeres on their way, I know that just financial help is something that they can put to good use. It will help cover their costs, and to purchase medicine and supplies for the people they will be working on. Just talk to Brian or Kasondra about that trip. Maybe God has blessed you and that’s something you can do.
There are some ideas. Now let’s minister to Jesus by caring for “the least of these.”
